winning at life

We demoed our distributed project for Casper yesterday, which we finished just an hour before the demo, after several fun and exciting all-nighters. Abbu was conspicuously absent. No doubt he was too embarrassed to come out in public after his prophecy that we would fail horribly did not come true. He yelled at us two weeks or so ago, if you remember, and asseverated that our progress had been “very bad”. It won’t surprise you to know that we spent another week after that doing not much at all, and only really got started on the project with a week left to go. And we came out with flying colors, as GK liked to say at the most inappropriate times. The look on Casper’s face when he told us we’d done a decent job was something to behold. He may as well have shed tears of joy and given us research assistantships on the spot. As for the final report, Abbu had prophesied in his usual pessimistic manner that it would be below par. I am happy to report that was far from being the case. Our final report was in fact, something to behold as well. I am sure that in Casper’s eyes Nicky and I shall be on the same level as Leslie Lamport now. Of course, the grades for this project won’t be out till the end of the semester, and the old adage about not counting your chickens before they hatch is as appropriate here is as it is anywhere, but the important thing is that… well, that Abbu wasn’t there during the demo.

Today was the last algorithms class. It was a little wistful, to be sure, because I don't have any morning classes next semester. The TAs, whom I have elsewhere criticized for being incompetent or just plain uninterested (well, all but B., anyway), brought boxes and boxes of doughnuts that students could partake of. I thought that was very thoughtful of them. It totally made up for all the bad grading, incomprehensible homework solutions, and hebetudinous office hours. Good job, TAs.